Discussion These are the last decades...

[Archness]

While many would say their traumas and horrid experiences alone made them suicidal, I feel that much more people, including myself, are suicidal due to the inevitability of where ourselves and the world will go. I must ask, everyone, if they have this innate feeling that we're living at the end times. That is quite a broad thing, as I'm not talking strictly about the physical destruction of earth/all-life, or a conscious thought or feeling directly that "The end is nigh".

No, what I'm referring to is this greater nihilism and pessimism about the world, and our placement in it. I cannot just point to a singular "Issue" that's bringing down the world, it's more like a cascade of variables and logical conclusions bringing about this endpoint. It's all so much, but if you've done any research into these matters yourself, or are particularly in-tune with the world state, you'd understand perfectly. This is really something more broad, vague, and outright immaterial that's difficult to really wrap your head around.

The signs and things we can point to, can be somewhat individual, as it's more of what we're particularly sensitive to. For me, this is AI, ever increasing rates of depression and suicide without any clear solution that'll actually happen, & the ganeral social webs and connections around everyone dissolving into nothing, due to many other factors in modern society.

It's just such a broad thing, but this feeling that we're in the last decades before humanity makes itself extinct, replaces/makes itself redundant, or some other thing that could be described as "Game Over" is just really depressing for me. Like, I'm young but the party's basicly over already. IDK if it's just my autistic ass, but idk, seems like the kind of thing suicidal people would talk about, and many people I observe innexplicably have this extrasensory feeling that the end of things is comming soon; Though that's prob just this all too prevelant nihilism/hopelessness coming up.

What do you think? It's a good reason why I want to CTB.

 

[wagner2029]

I can't agree with anything you wrote, this talk about the end of the world has existed for thousands of years, they talked about it during the Black Death, in times of drought and famine, but if you look at our conditions they are excellent, the expectation of Life only increases, we don't have problems with hunger, at least the problem is political and not production, medicine improves every day, we have easy access to everything.
Of course, not everything is rosy, we have problems in our society, before men were raised to be fathers and husbands, women to be mothers and take care of the house, today everyone can do what they want, but no one does anything.
We are going through changes that would take centuries to happen, but they happened in just a decade, I think things will stabilize and in a thousand years they will study our era amazed at the changes we had to face.
I'm going to CTB because I no longer feel like living in this world, but it's not such a bad world.

 

[Bleeding eyes]

I agree and also believe we are all doomed. The cost of living keeps getting farther and farther out of reach, we all chase everything we want but can't have it. I'll never get to retire and I've just given up on the idea, I look at my generation, the younger generation and even the one before mine, we are all doomed. We are destined to work till we die chasing a dream we can't have. That's why I'm not playing that game I'll ctb when I'm ready so I don't have to suffer a life of working every spare moment just to survive for a day longer.
I can't stop the mega corporations buring the world and the governments set on taking everything we have, so why fight. They can't control my life if I'm dead.

 

[Archness]

I can't agree with anything you wrote, this talk about the end of the world has existed for thousands of years, they talked about it during the Black Death, in times of drought and famine, but if you look at our conditions they are excellent, the expectation of Life only increases, we don't have problems with hunger, at least the problem is political and not production, medicine improves every day, we have easy access to everything.
Of course, not everything is rosy, we have problems in our society, before men were raised to be fathers and husbands, women to be mothers and take care of the house, today everyone can do what they want, but no one does anything.
We are going through changes that would take centuries to happen, but they happened in just a decade, I think things will stabilize and in a thousand years they will study our era amazed at the changes we had to face.
I'm going to CTB because I no longer feel like living in this world, but it's not such a bad world.

Honestly I can understand. But while before the human race would only become extinct through natural causes, now nuclear war and other man-made disasters could do a much better job. IMO, with historical events with plagues where more then half of people you see are dead-or-dying or you're living through the cold-war you'd honestly be kinda justified in thinking it was the end times. It's easy to dismiss peoples fears from back then when we're already in the times afterwards.

Still, I find people dismissing the threat of the end of the world because "Well it didn't happen yet, so it'll never happen" to be somewhat arrogant.

You also made me realize how stupidly-resilient the human race could be. 99% of people could die and there'd still be enough people physically alive to possibly continue the species, esp India and China. I mean, I guess I'm probably wrong, realistically, but I'd consider a 99% death scenario "Game Over" tbh.

I also kinda worry that things will get worse, as life-quality and even length goes down. Eventually, it should get better then things are nowadays, but I believe that things will get worse for like a few generations before they recover and improve again. Like the fall of Rome, the Renaissance, then the modern period. There could be a collapse of modern society, and I think it'll probably happen, but unless it comes with WW3, nukes, or people suddenly dumping all their toxic waste willy-nilly, it wouldn't be the end of the world. But still, WW3 and Nuclear warfare have very high chances of coming if our modern societies started falling for any number of reasons; Such as population collapse due to low birthrates, economy, or something else. There's never been a moment in history like right now, so no one really knows what they're doing or what could bring it all down, making it nervously unstable at it's core.

Maybe I should've made it more about "Doom" instead of "THE END OF ALL THINGS".

I agree and also believe we are all doomed. The cost of living keeps getting farther and farther out of reach, we all chase everything we want but can't have it. I'll never get to retire and I've just given up on the idea, I look at my generation, the younger generation and even the one before mine, we are all doomed. We are destined to work till we die chasing a dream we can't have. That's why I'm not playing that game I'll ctb when I'm ready so I don't have to suffer a life of working every spare moment just to survive for a day longer.
I can't stop the mega corporations buring the world and the governments set on taking everything we have, so why fight. They can't control my life if I'm dead.

Life's a strange game at times. The only winning move is not to play. Struggle & fail, or give up & fail, what a difficult choice.

 

[AbsurdAbyss]

I think it starts and ends with us; the world is, after all, what we make of it in our time here. What's truly beautiful is to leave it as it is, without trying to make it better or worse.

 

[sserafim]

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."

 

[Argo]

While many would say their traumas and horrid experiences alone made them suicidal, I feel that much more people, including myself, are suicidal due to the inevitability of where ourselves and the world will go. I must ask, everyone, if they have this innate feeling that we're living at the end times.

Never saw anyone ask about this and link it to suicide, that's interesting. For me it's the opposite. I'm still spotting what others are, that things appear more bad now than ever before(we always had more fantasy stories and more ignorance in the past, at least masses did. Someone being tortured in a dungeon somewhere with no help coming, would be fully lucid to the horror and hellish nature of things)


So you're spot on as far as the zeitgeist being grim, and there's definitely a link to that and suicidality-- it's not just the fact that we have more lethal substances now. A world that was okay would not be seeking them.


But the core question is "end times" and "what is the real nature of the world". End times were always a thing. It was ever present. So I don't think that's new. Also, there's this intuition you see all over that "things are getting worse". That there was some golden age before, where things were better. And now things are collapsing and going south. I don't think that's true. I think the real horror is the opposite: That things can only expand. That the gas pedal gets pressed down more and more, and the ride is unstoppable. I think collapse is a kind of coping mechanism to shield people from the horror that the only thing that can possibly come from this reality is something really monstrous, large, cosmic, demonic. And that thing is absolutely unstoppable, except by a bigger monster. And that's not some perversion of "better times"-- things have quite literally always been that way, from day 1.

 

[Ulrich]

I wonder what the great men of the past would have thought of our current society. Great men are like historical artifacts. Never can they be reproduced. Writers, painters, philosophers, musicians, etc., of the modern era should all give up. It's useless.

 

[Archness]

Never saw anyone ask about this and link it to suicide,

Really? I myself saw many people talking about how society is getting worse and worse leading to mental problems and possibly suicide. YT Channels like Moon and Upper_Echelon make very effective suicidefuel at times, as it's often implied that these changes are unstoppable.

But the core question is "end times" and "what is the real nature of the world". End times were always a thing. It was ever present. So I don't think that's new. Also, there's this intuition you see all over that "things are getting worse". That there was some golden age before, where things were better. And now things are collapsing and going south. I don't think that's true. I think the real horror is the opposite: That things can only expand. That the gas pedal gets pressed down more and more, and the ride is unstoppable. I think collapse is a kind of coping mechanism to shield people from the horror that the only thing that can possibly come from this reality is something really monstrous, large, cosmic, demonic. And that thing is absolutely unstoppable, except by a bigger monster. And that's not some perversion of "better times"-- things have quite literally always been that way, from day 1.

Yeah, tbh I kinda wish the end times would happen instead of watching everything transform into something terrifying. I guess feeling the "End" also comes down to things getting so horrible, so alien to what it means to be human, and changing human nature itself in some ways that it's effectively Game Over. Such as Brave New World, or a society that's purely just to support people being veggies processing "Positive Feelings".

Honestly, when you think about it, as you described, death and the end of the world may be preferable to the alternative : "The gas pedal". A society where everyone is redundant, everyone's just passing the time until they die. Maybe a society where you'll need to take drugs, modify yourself with technology, and possibly go trans/post human or be left behind.

I think, if those "extensive" metamorphosis of our world wasn't to happen, that it'd happen just a little less, and a little more over time. But those are just my thoughts. Besides, it seems like "real" quality of life has peaked. You basically have a huge amount of coping mechanisms to cover up how empty and hollow modern life has become. The issues of modernity is so large and complex you'd need an encyclopedia to explain it all.

So you're spot on as far as the zeitgeist being grim, and there's definitely a link to that and suicidality-- it's not just the fact that we have more lethal substances now. A world that was okay would not be seeking them.

Yeah, it seems that anyone who isn't simply ignorant or gaslighting themselves can just sense that feeling I described before. Heck, alot of people feel something off but can't really properly put it to words, or just point at a current issue. Like, the world peaked, and now it's all downhill, like we're in the endgame. Either : There's a great decline and a new dark age where life is ALOT worse, humanity continues to make progress just to give way to a successor, or through man-made disaster or war there's a near or total extinction event.

Honestly, it's all so tiring to think about, and it's not as if I have any power to do anything. Like everyone else, I can only sit back, relax, and wait untill things are bad enough I die or kill myself.

 

[MatrixPrisoner]

I can't agree with anything you wrote, this talk about the end of the world has existed for thousands of years, they talked about it during the Black Death, in times of drought and famine, but if you look at our conditions they are excellent, the expectation of Life only increases, we don't have problems with hunger, at least the problem is political and not production, medicine improves every day, we have easy access to everything.
Of course, not everything is rosy, we have problems in our society, before men were raised to be fathers and husbands, women to be mothers and take care of the house, today everyone can do what they want, but no one does anything.
We are going through changes that would take centuries to happen, but they happened in just a decade, I think things will stabilize and in a thousand years they will study our era amazed at the changes we had to face.
I'm going to CTB because I no longer feel like living in this world, but it's not such a bad world.

Only hope is a meteor. Similar in size to the one that took out the dinosaurs. But none are showing up on NASA's radar. Oh well, maybe some unknown phenomenon makes the sun explode into a fiery dwarf that takes out everything inside the asteroid belt. Pray, y'all. Pray.

 

[DarkRange55]

I can't agree with anything you wrote, this talk about the end of the world has existed for thousands of years, they talked about it during the Black Death, in times of drought and famine, but if you look at our conditions they are excellent, the expectation of Life only increases, we don't have problems with hunger, at least the problem is political and not production, medicine improves every day, we have easy access to everything.
Of course, not everything is rosy, we have problems in our society, before men were raised to be fathers and husbands, women to be mothers and take care of the house, today everyone can do what they want, but no one does anything.
We are going through changes that would take centuries to happen, but they happened in just a decade, I think things will stabilize and in a thousand years they will study our era amazed at the changes we had to face.
I'm going to CTB because I no longer feel like living in this world, but it's not such a bad world.

Exactly, the end is always perpetually "nigh"

Only hope is a meteor. Similar in size to the one that took out the dinosaurs. But none are showing up on NASA's radar. Oh well, maybe some unknown phenomenon makes the sun explode into a fiery dwarf that takes out everything inside the asteroid belt. Pray, y'all. Pray.

I wonder what the great men of the past would have thought of our current society. Great men are like historical artifacts. Never can they be reproduced. Writers, painters, philosophers, musicians, etc., of the modern era should all give up. It's useless.

View attachment IMG_0548.webp

I wonder what the great men of the past would have thought of our current society. Great men are like historical artifacts. Never can they be reproduced. Writers, painters, philosophers, musicians, etc., of the modern era should all give up. It's useless.

View attachment IMG_0548.webp

Honestly I can understand. But while before the human race would only become extinct through natural causes, now nuclear war and other man-made disasters could do a much better job. IMO, with historical events with plagues where more then half of people you see are dead-or-dying or you're living through the cold-war you'd honestly be kinda justified in thinking it was the end times. It's easy to dismiss peoples fears from back then when we're already in the times afterwards.

Still, I find people dismissing the threat of the end of the world because "Well it didn't happen yet, so it'll never happen" to be somewhat arrogant.

You also made me realize how stupidly-resilient the human race could be. 99% of people could die and there'd still be enough people physically alive to possibly continue the species, esp India and China. I mean, I guess I'm probably wrong, realistically, but I'd consider a 99% death scenario "Game Over" tbh.

I also kinda worry that things will get worse, as life-quality and even length goes down. Eventually, it should get better then things are nowadays, but I believe that things will get worse for like a few generations before they recover and improve again. Like the fall of Rome, the Renaissance, then the modern period. There could be a collapse of modern society, and I think it'll probably happen, but unless it comes with WW3, nukes, or people suddenly dumping all their toxic waste willy-nilly, it wouldn't be the end of the world. But still, WW3 and Nuclear warfare have very high chances of coming if our modern societies started falling for any number of reasons; Such as population collapse due to low birthrates, economy, or something else. There's never been a moment in history like right now, so no one really knows what they're doing or what could bring it all down, making it nervously unstable at it's core.

Maybe I should've made it more about "Doom" instead of "THE END OF ALL THINGS".

Life's a strange game at times. The only winning move is not to play. Struggle & fail, or give up & fail, what a difficult choice.

WWIII, even if it were a full-scale nuclear exchange, would not cause the extinction of humanity. Society may have to reboot but not 100% extinction, even from nuclear winter. Birthrates are coming down in developed nations and rising in undeveloped nations. It doesn't mean that the global population will shrink to zero.

 

[Archness]

WWIII, even if it were a full-scale nuclear exchange, would not cause the extinction of humanity. Society may have to reboot but not 100% extinction, even from nuclear winter. Birthrates are coming down in developed nations and rising in undeveloped nations. It doesn't mean that the global population will shrink to zero.

True, birthrate is a fickle thing it seems. But I don't think rising birthrates in undeveloped nations really match the falling birthrates of developed ones, from a global standpoint. Also, those nations may develop and experience falling birthrates, they're also seemingly being used as a cheap-workforce for developed countries. I also don't think a handful of underdeveloped countries becoming the source of new-population for the rest of the world that's more-and-more developed is practical or without issue.

Als, with how resilient our species actually is, maybe I was thinking more of an apocalypse or great downfall in the first place instead of all-ends. Yeah, I was being a bit dramatic imo.

 

[ringo99]

Sorry you're wrong. Going by history, humanity has survived far worse and come out on top. We even have plans in place to deflect earth killer asteroids. It's logical to assume that many who went through the worst periods felt the way you did but there were just enough people who refused to give up and did what they could to avert catastrophe/extinction.

Not sure who coined it but there's a saying that goes, "Good times create weak men, weak men create bad times, bad times breed strong men, strong men create good times" and so ad infinitum.

 

[cantthinkofusername]

i think the one universal constant is that life goes on
even if the world gets worse, or society collapses, or the zombie apocalypse happens, life finds a way
two hundred billion people lived and died before us, everything happening today is miniscule in the grand scheme of things

 

[destinationlosangel]

I agree a lot with what OP has to say. This truly does seem like the end times. AI will complete the transformation of our world into a total surveillance state. Middle class ppl will end up in a situation where they will have nothing soon. Look at the high rents, expensive college fees, the increasing costs of living. Technological advances dont seem to be helping any of these actual problems. No wonder the newer generations dont see any point in living in a world like this

 

[DarkRange55]

True, birthrate is a fickle thing it seems. But I don't think rising birthrates in undeveloped nations really match the falling birthrates of developed ones, from a global standpoint. Also, those nations may develop and experience falling birthrates, they're also seemingly being used as a cheap-workforce for developed countries. I also don't think a handful of underdeveloped countries becoming the source of new-population for the rest of the world that's more-and-more developed is practical or without issue.

Als, with how resilient our species actually is, maybe I was thinking more of an apocalypse or great downfall in the first place instead of all-ends. Yeah, I was being a bit dramatic imo.

For birthrates

Mapped: Population Growth by Region (1900-2050F)

In this visualization, we map the populations of major regions at three different points in time: 1900, 2000, and 2050 (forecasted).

www.visualcapitalist.com

Automation will solve labor along with immigration